Know when 1% = 241%?
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress depends on the unreasonable man." George Bernard Shaw
"Double sales?!"
"DOUBLE SALES!"
"How the heck can you talk about doubling sales EVER, let alone in THIS economy?!"
"You're unreasonable. Nevermind."
I hear that all the time from small-minded individuals who can't get out of their own way. From those that "are unique...just like everyone else."
If you're focused on growing your business why not focus on building it big? Get unreasonable. Get fired up. Get fanatical about growing your business.
I'm not saying you can double it overnight (but maybe you can).
However, if you have the guts and the discipline to do what it takes to stand apart from your competition, to "delight to the upside" when it comes to winning over your clients while outworking and out-thinking everyone else in your industry, you can double your business in what the sheeple would consider record time.
With that in mind I will provide you 365 things you can implement to help you double your sales in the next 365 days.
So the 1st thing you need to do double your sales iscommit to never-ending, constant, steady improvement.
Running a successful business is like nurturing a successful marriage. Your work is not over the day you open for business or you say "I do."
On the contrary, the work has only just begun, thus the saying, "The honeymoon's over."
It's easy to OPEN a business. (It's easy to have a wedding.) It's harder to keep the doors and grow but NOW IS THE TIME to commit to growing and being excellent.
Now is the time to cut out the fluff and the extras and the B.S. and get better at everything you do. EVERYTHING!
Warning: that will take some work.
So commit to making one thing in your business 1% better today—and everyday—for the next 365 days and your business will grow.
Some ares I'll cover below to improve include:
- Your mindset
- Choose who to lose
- Know your ABCDEs
- Buyer personas
- Know Your SEO
- Have a Marketing Plan
- Know the #1 Job of a Business Owner
- Know the #1 Job of a Sales Manager
- Know the #1 Job of a Sales Person
- Only go on appointments when you're invited
- Have an agenda for every appointment
- Your understanding of traffic vs. conversions
- Creating better lead magnets
- Mastering web forms
- TOFU
- MOFU
- BOFU
- Implementing multi-media, multi-step nurture sequences
- Fix your follow-up failure
- Your CRM
- Your approach to social media
- Your business card
- Your exercise routine
- Your eating habits
- Your sleeping routine
- Your friends
- Your family
- Your self-education
- How to treat conferences
- Your voicemail message
- Your email signature
- Your blog
- Your website
- The cleanliness of your front desk
- The cleanliness of your parking lot
- Your Yellow Pages ad
- Your Google profile
- Your Yelp profile
- Your LinkedIn profile
- Your Facebook Fan Page
- Your direct mail
- Your newsletter
- Your logo
- Your script for answering the phones
- Your prospecting efforts
- The voicemails you leave for prospects
- Your upsells
- Your cross-promotions
- Your affiliates
- Your lead generation techniques
- Your online shopping cart
- Your web store
- Your membership site
- Your webinars
- Your copywriting
- Your guarantees
That should keep you busy for the weekend.
Back when Tiger Woods was the #1 golfer in the world, he lost the 2007 Masters to Zach Johnson by two shots.
Those two shots—out of 291 over four days—cost Tiger $763,667.
If Tiger had improved his game over four days by 0.00687% he would have forced a playoff with Zach Johnson.
If Tiger would have improved his game by 0.0103% he would have won outright and his income would have grown 241%!!
That's the power of incremental improvement.
But in sports, the second-place finisher still takes home a paycheck. You and I don't have that luxury. We're playing for all the marbles—and all the money.
In business, your income and your profits grow exponentially with each percentage point you can grow because in sales it's a zero sum game. Winner takes all.
How many clients have you lost in the last 12 months that could have been won with a 1% improvement in the way you do business?
Choose Who To Lose
Pick your niche because
There's riches in niches."
Cardiac surgeons make more money than family practitioners for a reason. And they don't advertise! The local family doctor knows the best cardiac surgeon in town and sends his patients suffering from chest pains to that surgeon all day long.
If you're known as a "pretty good guy...but a little scatter-brained at times," your business is in for a slow, painful death.
For the longest time, I wanted to do all I could to help the small business owner.
I created lower pricing models and extended payment terms, I'd let them stay past their allotted time until I realized I was being bled dry and worked to death because I cared more about the growth of my clients' business than they did.
So I created group training for the cash-strapped business owners and salespeople of the world, and I raised my prices as much as 250% while cutting back the allowable consulting time by 50% for my private consulting, and low and behold, I could come up for air.
(I teach my clients how to do this, too, like Alycia Wicker.)
Today, right now, get crystal clear on who you can help, who you want to help, and why.
Then tell everyone else to either take a hike or tell them it's not your specialty, but you'll help them as best you can for a higher price and let them decide.
Then the stress will be off of you, and you can focus on what you love, you'll do a better job at it, your clients will be better served, they'll provide more testimonials and referrals, and your business will grow with less stress and more fun, guaranteed.
If you'd like to grow your sales by 241% this year, may I be so bold as to suggest you enroll in this sales program?
Your growth is guaranteed.
Know Your SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It means making sure your site is built on a solid foundation (optimized), so search engines can accurately index you so your ideal customers can find you.
Think of a search engine as the librarian at your high school who has to label all of the new books with the old Dewey Decimal System and put them on the right shelves.
If she labels a book on sports as being a book on cooking, that book will be lost forever.
Likewise, if you have a nice website or blog with great pictures of your products and each photo is labeled "img_1" or "photo-234," they will be lost forever.
To know how you should label your site, which includes Titles, Descriptions, Tags, Headlines, and even content checkout Google's Keyword Tool.
It's free to use, and it gives you insight into what the marketplace types into Google's search bar when they are looking for what you do and/or offer.
When I do a search for "email marketing" I see that there are 1,220,000 searches for that phrase. (I also did some research on Cost Per Click and found that it would cost me over $14 per click to advertise for that phrase and that's rather expensive. I'll discuss CPC later.)
I also see that "email marketing software" is searched "just" 135,000 times while "email marketing system" is searched just 4,400 times.
Since a big part of my business is supporting entrepreneurs on Infusionsoft and HubSpot's email marketing system, I decided to write a "lead magnet" entitled "40 Ways To Profit From Your Email Marketing System."
I named it that for several reasons:
- It contains the phrase "email marketing," which is an expensive keyword on which to bid on Google
- It contains the less-searched entire phrase "email marketing system," which means I can start to get ranked for that "long-tail keyword phrase" more easily (more on long-tail keywords in another post)
- It attracts the types of clients I want.
If you right-click on this post and "View Source," you'll see my title, description, and keywords, and you'll see that they contain "seo, search engine optimization, email marketing software, infusionsoft crm, email marketing system." That's one of the reasons you found me.
If you would like help with SEO on your own site or getting the most out of your email marketing system, drop me a line.
SEO Guests on The Sales Podcast
- Brian Dean of Backlinko on Why SEO Is Not Dead & How To Do It Right
- SEO Expert Danny Star On How To Do SEO Right
- Phil Singleton Explains Google & SEO Basics (For Mere Mortals)
- SEO Basics: What You Need To Know In 2018
Have a Marketing Plan
Entrepreneurs and salespeople are not known for their planning skills.
The typical entrepreneur is either a dreamer or a tinkerer with their head down and focused on building a better mousetrap.
The "typical" salesperson is the fast-talking, glad-handing, back-slapping, joke-telling good ol' boy or girl with a quick wit, fancy briefcase, and a nice pen they gladly loan you so you can
Press real hard...the 3rd copy's yours."
While that is true of the "average" salesperson, what separates the pros from the punks is their ability to plan their sales and marketing strategies and tactics.
It's sad that so few talented sales people, entrepreneurs and business owners understand marketing.
I've met with representatives from the SBA and SCORE and the Chamber of Commerce and while all are well-meaning and give great advice such as
- "Write a DETAILED business plan."
- "Get your financing in order."
- "Ensure your supply chain is established."
- "Get a nice big building so you have room to expand."
- "Take your time developing your product."
"If you build it they will come" only happens in the Land of Make Believe.
There are COUNTLESS inventors and service experts going out of business DAILY because they don't know how to get the word out.
They know they have to balance the books each day, month, quarter and year but they've never been told they must also create and balance their marketing every day, month, quarter and year.
So they become an advertising victim.
The local Yellow Pages rep sees the new business license at City Hall and comes on over with a nice full color brochure, an OK tie, a cheesy grin and a lot of pie charts and bar graphs showing the coverage they provide, number of books delivered and how they are even providing online listings, too!
Well gowleeee, I'm just gonna have ta git me sum of dem Yellow Page ads, now ain't I?"
Fast forward 11 months:
- the phone ain't a-ringin'
- your palms, they are a-sweatin'
- sleep, you ain't a-gettin' (and that ain't the ONLY thing you AIN'T gettin')
- the bills, they are a-piling up.
And the Yellow Pages rep has the guts to show up and remind you it's time to renew your ad...and you do because you don't have a marketing plan but you know you're supposed to advertise somewhere. WTF?
I'd argue with anyone that a marketing plan should be the first plan an entrepreneur creates before they go into business. The plan should address every form of advertising and marketing and rank ordered based on a combination of factors including:
- reach
- coverage
- efficacy
- affordability
- repeatability
- impact
- longevity
All forms of advertising and marketing should be considered including:
- email marketing
- print
- newspapers
- magazines
- radio
- TV
- affiliates (become an affiliate of The Sales Whisperer® for free)
- joint ventures
- social media
- online
- direct mail
- trade shows
And all of these forms of advertising and marketing must be scheduled and implemented like clockwork. For example, let's say you want to attend a trade show that is chock full of your ideal prospects. You need to reserve your spot a good 3 months out and begin a targeted, detailed, multi-step campaign that:
- tells the world you're attending;
- press releases
- blogging
- social media updates
- emails
- postcards
- ads in trade journals
- provides incentives for attendees to stop by your booth;
- enables you to create the most enticing booth possible;
- includes an automated means to capture the contact information of your visitors;
- automates the follow-up with all trade show attendees as well as those that stopped by your booth and it runs for as much as year, leading up to the trade show NEXT YEAR!
Times are tough. People are more discerning with their money. Their B.S. antennas are fully extended and set to maximum sensitivity.
You need a detailed, prolonged, multi-touch, multi-media advertising and marketing plan to GROW YOUR MARKET SHARE right now.
Focus on increased profits as a by-product of growing your market share because your competition is NOT this thorough in their marketing. If you can grow your market share now it will pay huge dividends when the economy turns around.
To see if you qualify for a free consultation, contact The Sales Whisperer® today, and let's see how we can help you grow.
The #1 Job of a Business Owner
Paul Dunay has a great blog post on the wisdom of increasing your advertising and marketing during a recession.
In it, he references Seth Godin's "The Purple Cow" as well as Innovating through a Recession by Professor Andrew J. Razeghi at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
In the post, he references a famous McGraw-Hill study of 600 businesses and found these now-obvious results:
- During the 1981-1982 recession, businesses that maintained or increased their ad spend averaged higher sales growth during the recession and in the following 3 years! In fact, sales were 256% over their weaker, more foolish competitors that cut back on advertising. (This goes to show you can't save your way into business success and you can't tax your way into prosperity as the idiots in Washington D.C. continue to show us...but I digress.)
- A more recent study conducted in 2001 found that businesses that advertised aggressively during that recession increased market share 2 ½ times the average for all businesses in the post-recession period.
How 'bout them apples, huh?
What is your advertising and marketing plan?
If you're like most business owners, you either:
- Don't have a plan at all.
- Have a plan, but you think it stinks, so you don't do anything with it.
- Have a plan, but lose it or bury it.
- Have a plan, but don't follow it because you're not committed to it.
- Have a plan, and it is now in its 797th iteration, is 1,100 pages long with 37 footnotes per section, and you're waiting to finish that final chapter before you take action.
Take action now.
Plug into the Make Every Sale program to get specific ideas on how to grow your business.
Then, after you get a sense for my style and abilities and you're comfortable with them both as well as my ability to produce results for you we can talk about various programs I offer to help kick start and supercharge your advertising and marketing.
That is, of course, if you'd like to also grow 256%.
Only Go On Appointments When Invited
Yesterday was the last day you are EVER allowed to say,
I'll be in the area next week. How about I stop by?"
Beggars "are in the area."
Sales amateurs who don't have a plan have nothing better to do than be "in the area."
Sales rookies that are under quota "are in the area."
Think about it: How often is your attorney "in the area?"
How often is your dentist "in the area?"
How often is Donald Trump slumming around some big city, hoping someone will take an appointment with him?
Stop begging for appointments.
Stop "popping in" in people.
Develop a sales and marketing plan that will automate your entire process and work it.
At the same time you need to understand with moonshine-clear clarity why your prospects MUST do business with you and ONLY you and internalize those reasons until they permeate every cell in your body.
You will then walk tall, hold your head high and convey with confidence (not arrogance) that you are the best option for your client (and they are clients, not customers, which I address in another post.)
When you have that confidence it will come through on the phone, in person and/or in your written correspondence with your prospects and they will be drawn to you.
(Those that are not drawn to you will remain in your marketing sequences and will eventually be drawn to you! So create and work your marketing plan!)
Later on we'll discuss more specifics on the verbiage used for opening and controlling a prospecting call as well as generating quality leads online but once you have a good prospect on the line and you have established they do have a need and can make a decision you simply say,
Mr. Prospect, it sounds like (____) is a real concern of yours. Is that an accurate statement? If you would like to invite me over we can spend a few minutes exploring your needs, examining the causes of your most pressing dilemmas and if I can help you I'll explain the various alternatives my firm offers and you then decide which, if any, make sense for you. Does that sound like a meeting you would like to have?"
THAT'S IT!
If you can master this short exchange you will initially go on fewer appointments, which has the added benefit of giving you more time to prospect, but the appointments you do go on will go smoother, with less stress, will close more often, at higher margin and more fun.
If you'd like to accelerate your mastery of this process you can enroll in the Make Every Sale Program. Your success is guaranteed.
Have An Agenda For Every Appointment
Once your prospect agrees to invite you to his place of work the real work begins. At that point you say to the prospect,
In the interest of time and to make sure we cover the key points, would you mind if we set a quick agenda for our time together?"
At that point, the prospect will say something elegant, such as,
Ahhh, well, yeah. Ok."
You immediately set the tone by replying with Step 1 of The Agenda, which goes something like this:
Mr. Prospect, the main objective for us getting together is not to discuss speeds and feeds and specs and details of my widget but to see if there is a fit between our two companies to work together."
Far too often, especially in technical sales, sales people let the prospect take control of the meeting and turn it into a one-way free education for the prospect consisting solely of the sales person explaining every feature and function, every bell and whistle, every option and add-on only to be told
Thank you very much. You've been very helpful. We'll take your information and give it serious consideration. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. NEXT!"
We'll cover how to prevent that from happening in more detail with the next several posts, but the following steps all depend on your setting the tone by setting the agenda.
This little nugget and more are covered in great detail in the Make Every Sale Program.
Mastering Web Forms
You'll hear me say this again and again, but
You do not have a traffic problem, you have a conversion problem.
The purpose of your marketing is not to drive a visitor to your website.
Sure, that's a necessary first step, but you can't buy groceries (or good whiskey) showing your unique visitor stats to the cashier at the grocery store.
You must convert your visitors into contacts so you can begin developing a relationship that leads to a sale (so you can take your commissions from that sale and buy that whiskey!)
To convert your visitors into identifiable contacts your must offer them something of value in return for their contact information.
That something of value is what we call a Lead Magnet.
However, it's not enough to produce a super-awesome lead magnet. Sure, it helps, but if you mess up the web forms you have your visitors fill out, you'll be less successful than you could be.
The dichotomy with converting your visitors into contacts with web forms is that the less information you require of your visitors the greater the number that will actually complete your web form. So you must decide if you want:
- More leads but know less about them.
- Fewer leads but know more about them.
It's the old Quantity vs. Quality.
Like all good marketing efforts, you must test and measure but what I typically do is ask for just email and maybe first name on my first web form to make it fast and easy for a curious but cautious visitor to enter my "gravity well" as Roy Williams would call it.
Then I take them to a second form with a bonus offer in exchange for them providing more information.
However, if the information I'm giving is of more detail / greater value, I will ask for more information from them.
That's the TOFU, MOFU, BOFU process I'll get into next.
But for now, experiment with your web forms. Make them really nice and pretty then make them really ugly and see what converts.
Ask for just email, then first name and email, then first, last, company, and email and see not only what converts visitors into leads better, but also what converts into conversations better.
Because that's the name of the game. To have conversations with qualified prospects who can and will buy what you sell.
Whichever one you choose, I guarantee you'll be fired up the first time you get a notification that your web form was completed and a new prospect entered your database. It's worth the effort to master list building with Web Forms.
So, how do you create Web Forms?
You can learn HTML (and frustrate yourself) or invest in one of a couple of platforms that let you make them with point-and-click simplicity.
If you're brand new to Web Forms and autoresponders, you can get started with a 30 day trail for free of one of the simplest yet most capable platforms here.
If you have been experimenting with Web Forms and autoresponders and/or have a decent-sized list (2,000+ names), I recommend you integrate your auto-responder with a CRM.
To find the best CRM for you, your budget, and your goals, take the free CRM Quiz.
TOFU—Top of Funnel—Marketing
What I recommend is that you create a TOFU, MOFU, or BOFU process for gathering information on your visitors.
- TOFU—Top of Funnel
- MOFU—Middle of Funnel
- BOFU—Bottom of Funnel
MOFU—Middle of Funnel—Marketing
Middle
BOFU—Bottom of Funnel—Marketing
Bottom
Implementing multi-media, multi-step nurture sequences
Bottom
Welcome to the Age of Relevance.
When I ask people "how does Google get paid?" I usually geta lot of tilted head looks, some guesses like "AdWords?" or "PPC?" or "Sponsored links?"
While all of those are mostly correct, the real answer is Google gets paid by delivering relevant ads at the Moment of Relevance.
If you do a Google search for "iPhone" you'll see search results related to iPhones, AT&T, MP3 players, iPods, etc. What you WON'T see are ads for chihuahuas because they aren't relevant to your search phrase.
I tell you this because you, too, must deliver relevant content to your prospects and customers, which means you need to be thorough with your list segmentation (or categorizing or tagging.)
For example, I have several free reports and/or audio downloads I offer here as my lead magnets:
- Making Good Money In Bad Times
- The 7 Deadly Sins of Selling
- 40 Ways to Profit From Your Email Marketing System
- The Sales Agenda
As you can see, these lead magnets appeal to different sales and marketing experts at different times in their careers. I
f you download The Sales Agenda, I'll eventually invite you to invest in my Sales Training Flash Cards or my "79 Stories."
Maybe I'll offer "The Best Sales Secrets" for free in return for more information on you, your title, your company, the CRM you use, or your income goals.
Conversely, if you download "The 7 Deadly Sins of Selling," I might invite you to join my Make Every Sale program.
By segmenting my list, I can make relevant offers at relevant times to prospects that enter my "gravity well."
This enables me to cross-promote, up-sell, and deliver special one-time offers to monetize my list and grow my profits continuously.
The marketplace is more discerning than ever.
You need to fine-tune your marketing and speak DIRECTLY to the needs, wants, fears, and desires of your prospects so they know that you know them or they will get their needs fulfilled by someone they think understands them better.
If you only have Outlook right now, get familiar with the "Categories" feature to begin segmenting your list and keep as much information on your clients and prospects as possible.
Your list is your gold. Treat it as such and continue to mine it to make as much money as you want.
Fix your follow-up failure
Here's the sorry state of affairs for the average salesperson:
- 48% of salespeople never follow up with a prospect
- 25% of salespeople make a second contact and stop
- 12% of salespeople only make three contacts and stop
- 10% of salespeople make more than three contacts
- 2% of Sales are made on the second contact
- 5% of sales are made on the third contact
- 10% of sales are made on the fourth contact
80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact
If you need more help growing your sales, check out the following resources scattered around this site and a few others I operate, such as:
Good Selling,
